DE, you frequently use Campbell as an example of everything you think wrong with folk. Indeed unless I confuse you with another (which is possible), your remarks about him went rather further, on a thread about comments on the dress of women in folk clubs. I think the word "Neanderthal" was used by someone with little appreciation of the time or context. But perhaps that wasn't you.

The apparent objective (as, it seems, always) of your posting was to have a cheap sneer at others. That was apparently why the original thread here (the deleted one) was originally put here and your thread criticised as it was.

Maybe you confuse "amateurism" with "amateurishness". The concise Oxford makes the same mistake, although it correctly identifies "amateurish" as meaning "having the faults of an amateur".

Amateurism, correctly, is the belief in the value of doing something for the love of it (or for approbation or accolades) rather than for money reward. It was an epithet formerly widely used of the British civil service (and British tennis). In that correct sense, I rather approve of amateurism. I do not approve of conceit.

Why don't you use your knowledge constructively? When I see your posts, they are almost always seeking to damn, and rarely do they recognise any good, any value, any merit in others. Equally, it is rare for you to prescribe a hypothesis that can be tested. Mostly, you just criticise.

I suspect that you are a rather competent performer. But, you say, for 20 years you have not played in public. Where would we be if everyone else did likewise? The point was recently made on Radio 3 (or was it 4 - 93.5) in a programme about the glens of Antrim, by a player from the apparently well-known Johnny-Joe's pub, that by learners going to those sessions, and playing, the pieces are learned and preserved, and the learners improve. He did not add "altered" but he might have done.

We have to adopt and support the amateur if the music is to have roots from which to grow. We will be amateurish, at first. Some may improve. If that chance is not there, if all there is is sneering at real or imagined faults, little will grow. The cult of professionalism is damaging. Sneering at the self-effacing is both socially unpleasant and creatively destructive.